As you might have heard by now, Don Mattrick, former CEO for Microsoft and the big cheese behind Xbox, has relocated to Zynga, the company behind FarmVille. I have to say, I thought it was risky of Microsoft to put out a console that wasn’t going to play any of the Xbox 360 games already on the market. And thinking they could lure people along with prospects of a new Halo game was interesting as well.

The consumer backlash was obviously swift and this latest development is proof. Of course, they backpedaled after having to watch the crowd go wild at E3 when Sony announced they weren’t going to do anything different than what they’ve been doing already. But they still have a ways to go. I mean, who can really afford to pay 500 bucks for a game console in this economy?

Strangely enough, Mattrick’s salary at Zynga will be 95% comprised of stock. How much the 5% equals is not clear but if he wants to get PAID he’s going to need to supercharge a company that saw a 70% drop in its IPO last year. Maybe Mattrick learned his lesson like the CEO of Netflix did with his move to raise the price of subscription that prompted 1 million customers to collectively teabag him as they headed on over to Hulu and Redbox. When will these CEOs learn?

Consumerism is waning in this screwed up economy. The last two Black Fridays have been borderline pathetic. People are getting the shaft not only from employers who are now cutting back peoples’ hours so that they won’t be forced to provide health benefits under Obamacare but also from companies like Microsoft who want to nickel and dime people to death. Maybe Zynga can come up with a new game called GovernmentVille where people create an entire economic system from the ground up. Then the residents of GovernmentVille can afford to buy $500. game consoles to play their $85. games on.

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Hit the nail right on the head with this one Kuno, I mean its nice that they figured out the consoles policies were BS but really they should have announced those changes at E3. E3 is the one time a year non gamers or casuals get to see what the game industry has to offer and it’s their one big chance to reach out to these people who don’t follow gaming news regularly and they botched it, badly. Not just with consumers but with gamers and once they saw the pre-order sales take a huge hit they decided to change them a week later after trying to convince everyone companies can’t make big changes like that on the fly and everyone at Microsoft is 100% sure those policies would work, what a load of bull.

As for the backwards compatibility thing I know it sucks but at least Sony is letting you stream PS4 games over Gaikai, Microsoft on the other hand has no such service (that I know of) so at least we can enjoy games like Uncharted and Last of Us on PS4.